> >I do wish we could have the debate over what is the right language,
> >but I think the only practical way to make it happen and make it
> >involve little loss of blood is to be secure in the knowledge that the
> >language doesn't really matter, because it's the graph that counts.
>
> Right. Keep that in your sights. It's the graph that counts.
Yeah. I think of it as the triples (floating in space, free of
syntax), but I think those are the same things.
> >If we do pick a character-sequence notation as the fundamental
> >standard, I think it should be as simple as possible. Something like
> >N-Triples, although I can think of at least four big issues with even
> >something that simple. (identifier syntax, literal syntax [and type],
> >equality, and nesting.)
>
> Nah, the main (only?) N-triples issues are re-naming anonymous node
> labels and how to ignore triple ordering. All the others are issues,
> but they are issues in the RDF graph itself. RDF can't do nesting,
> for example. It just can't; nothing to do with Ntriples. (RDF++ maybe
> will, one day, but....)
Two sets of issues here.
(1) Yes, Nesting and Equality are clearly not in RDF as it stands.
But Drew was talking about trying to sneak in some extra features, and
those are my two favorites (if we're going to add anything, which I'm
not sure I'd want to do, even if I could). I'm probably happier
having them in a higher layer anyway.
(2) Issues with the labels in the graph:
(a) Identifier Syntax: Why must our logical symbols adhere to RFC
2396 URI-Reference syntax? Why not a number or string of bytes
or something? (I guess the answer is to help keep people from
accidentally using the same identifiers.)
(b) Literals: Why a sequence of Unicode characters, instead of
bytes or numbers (which seem much more clean)? Or is it even a
sequence of characters, or something more silly, like an XML
expression or something...?
But still, I'm pretty happy with how the group understanding is moving
along (seen from my easy chair). :-)
-- sandro